Benjamin Nead

Member since: October 28, 2010

Cars I drive: 1995 Saturn SL1, 2004 Mazda van, Montague MX bicycle

I'm a fan:

Bio:

Benjamin Nead started building and flying model airplanes as a kid. This directly led him to more comprehensive industrial arts studies in high school and, eventually, to learn the art of guitar luthiery in early adulthood. He relocated from his Pennsylvania home to Tucson, Arizona, in 1983 to pursue a career in restoring and repairing stringed musical instruments, which he maintained into the early 1990s.

From 2003 to 2010, Ben taught the art of building/flying model planes to elementary age youth through the Tucson Unified School District's After-school Enrichment program and also coordinated similar continuing education summer activities for Pima Community College.

Ben has been employed by Arizona Public Media, the NPR/PBS affiliated radio/television complex at the University of Arizona in Tucson since 1988, initially serving as KUAZ radio's weekday/evening Jazz music host. He is currently the local weekday/afternoon on-air host for that station's NPR news and information programming, producing the occasional electric car and renewable energy technology feature for the Arizona Spotlight radio newsmagazine.

Ben has also lent his technical services in the form of audio recording and live concert sound reinforcement to local arts presenting organizations as diverse as The Tucson Jazz Society, The Arizona Friends of Chamber Music and The St. Andrews Bach Society. Both his wife and son are performing classical musicians.

Cars owned - and self serviced - over the years have included a 1946 Willys Jeep, a 1967 Camaro convertible, a 1964 VW Beetle and, most notably, a 1951 Chevy Styleline Coupe, which was his daily transportation on the streets of Tucson for almost a decade.

Beginning in late 2012, Ben has decided to park his car most days to do his short work commute via a used Montague folding bicycle. Although there are no plans to convert the Montague to electric power, a study of e-bike technology has now begun.

Like so many others on PluginCars, the electric powered automobile has been a long term dream of Ben's. The motivation to promote EV technology is largely dictated by wishing to see the next generation of vehicles have far less of an environmental impact than current gasoline powered one.

Ben has been the coordinator for Tucson Plugs In since it's inaugural year, 2011. Tucson Plugs In is one component of National Plug In Day, a multi-city EV awareness event that occurs each fall, sponsored by Plug In America, The Sierra Club and The Electric Auto Association . . .

He has also contributed promotional articles here on Plug In Cars regarding those events.

Ben spent several weeks in 2012 living with and test driving both the Nissan Leaf and Chevrolet Volt, putting these cars through the paces in the capacity of daily urban family haulers. He also reproduced this "living in" experience with a Mitsubishi i-MiEV for a couple of weeks in the fall of 2013. His conclusion is that these modern factory manufactured electric cars are a practical reality and can serve the needs of most of today's automobile consumers.